Need You Now (26 page)

52

I
was in
the BOS Midtown office before nine
A.M
. I didn’t
have to pretend to be busy. My team leader had reams of financials for me to
review in preparation for Monday’s meeting with the private equity group in
Chicago—the one I had promised to attend, no problem, “my plate is clear.” Not
until after lunch did things settle down enough for me to make my move, which
was okay. Joe Barber was out of the office most of the day and couldn’t see me
until four forty-five. It was clear that his assistant had penciled me in only
because she thought it was adorable that a junior FA thought he could ring the
executive suite and schedule a meeting with the head of private wealth
management. There was definite surprise in her voice when she called me back at
four thirty.

“This is to confirm your four forty-five meeting
with Mr. Barber,” she said.

“I know. I have an appointment.”

“I mean, he really is going to see you.”

I thanked her and rode the elevator upstairs. As
the doors opened and I stepped out onto the polished marble floor, it occurred
to me that I was probably setting a bank record for the number of times a junior
FA had set foot in the executive suite in a single week.

Amazing what the inside track
on $2 billion will do for you.

Barber’s assistant offered me coffee or a soda,
which I declined, and then she led me down the hall to Barber’s office. He was
behind his desk, pacing as he spoke into his headset on a phone call, and he
waved us in. His assistant directed me to the armchair, and then she tiptoed out
of the office and closed the door.

“We need to hit the links again soon,” Barber said
into his headset, about to wrap up his call.

My focus was on my plan—not just what I would tell
him, but how I would deliver it. I’d been doing dry runs in my head since dawn,
however, and I was starting to fear that it would come across as too rehearsed.
I allowed my eyes to wander across the cherry-paneled walls, a quick survey of
the trappings of Wall Street success. Some would have regarded the shrine that
Barber had erected to himself as clutter, but there was indeed order to the
plaques and mementos encased in glass and gold-leaf frames. His early days at
Saxton Silvers. His service at Treasury. His elbow rubbing with the right
politicians. I’d noticed much of it on my last visit, but this time I was struck
by the contrast to what I’d seen in Evan’s apartment. If Evan’s walls told the
story of Wall Street thievery, Barber’s walls told the story of . . .
well, maybe it wasn’t such a contrast.

Barber ended his phone call and laid his headset
atop his desk. It had been a pleasant call, judging from his expression, but all
sign of pleasantries faded as he came around to the front of his desk, leaned
against the edge, and faced me.

“I assume this is about Lilly Scanlon’s banking
files,” he said.

Less than forty-eight hours had passed since his
Wednesday-evening meeting with Lilly and me, when I had sat in this very
armchair, when Lilly and I had received each other’s data with the challenge to
find the missing $2 billion.

“That’s correct,” I said.

He folded his arms, a smug smile creasing his lips.
“I feel it’s only fair to tell you that I’ve already received Lilly’s report on
your data. Very interesting.”

It was a weak bluff. “I don’t believe you.”

“Of course you don’t. But that doesn’t surprise
me.”

There was a light knock on the door, and Barber’s
assistant poked her head into the office.

“I’m very sorry to interrupt, but Mr. Lloyd has a
family emergency.”

Even Barber was taken aback, and it wasn’t his
emergency. “What is it?” asked Barber.

“I have a doctor on the line from Lemuel Shattuck
Hospital in Boston.” Then she looked at me with sadness in her eyes and said,
“It’s about your father.”

It was the kind of news no one wanted to receive,
but I was checking Barber’s reaction. Under my witness protection profile—the
life I had been living—Patrick Lloyd’s father was deceased. I wondered if Barber
realized that we were talking about Peter Mandretti’s father. If he did, he did
not let on.

“Would you like me to forward the call again?” his
assistant asked.

I had my BlackBerry with me; confronting Barber
about the spyware was part of the plan I had discussed with Scully.

“Yes, please do,” said Barber. “Forward it to his
BlackBerry.”

The way he’d said it confirmed in my mind that
Barber was behind the spyware, or that he at least knew it was installed. But in
a “family emergency” it wouldn’t have made sense to insist on using another
phone, anything less expeditious.

His assistant went back to her desk. My BlackBerry
vibrated in my pocket. “I can take it in the lobby,” I said.

“Please, use my study,” said Barber.

His offer of privacy was, of course, pointless,
since he would hear it anyway through spyware. But after the doctor’s call, my
actions were those of a son anxious for news about a family emergency that
involved his father, so I stepped into the study that was adjacent to his main
office and took the call. The woman on the line introduced herself as an
oncologist, Dr. Alice Kern.

“I’m calling about a patient named Sam Carlson,”
she said.

“Is he . . .”

“No. But the situation is grave. We don’t have any
family information on file, but he tells us that you are his son.”

I took a deep breath. “So he’s conscious?”

“Yes.”

“How long does he have?”

“You should come immediately. Special arrangements
have been made for you to stay at his bedside until it’s time.”

“Thank you for that.”

“You’re welcome.

“Does he know I’m coming?”

“Yes. He specifically asked for you.”

“He did?”

“Yes,” she said. “He indicated that there is
something he wishes to tell you face-to-face.”

Enough had been said on a phone with spyware. I
didn’t push the doctor to speak further. “Tell him I’m on my way.”

The call ended, and my knees felt like rubber. I
knew that I had to hurry, but for a moment I couldn’t move. I was scared for my
dad, for my sister, for myself. I felt sorry for Evan Hunt and his family. I
wanted to call Lilly, but I didn’t dare use the BlackBerry that the Wall Street
bully in the next room had essentially converted to his own use with spyware.
His ego was everywhere, even in this private study, the walls of which were
covered with still more glass-encased articles about him from newspapers and
magazines. It was sickening—and then, suddenly, it was an epiphany.

The
Forbes
article on
the wall caught my attention—almost slapped me in the face. I stepped closer and
locked eyes with the tough, take-no-prisoners persona of “Joe Barber, deputy
secretary of the U.S. Department of Treasury” staring back at me. Standing to
his left in the photograph was the assistant secretary for Intelligence and
Analysis, charged with overseeing the production and analysis of financial
intelligence for use by policy makers in combating illicit financial activities.
To his right was the assistant secretary for Terrorist Financing, responsible
for developing anti–money laundering and counterterrorist financing policy.

But what snagged my full attention—what reached
out, grabbed me by the neck, and shook me—was the subtitle in small but bold
letters:

Is al-Qaeda broke?

“Holy shit,” I said aloud.

I suddenly knew who Robledo’s clients were, knew
why an undercover agent had duped him into investing $2 billion through Gerry
Collins, knew why Treasury had ignored Evan’s thirty-eight red flags and allowed
Cushman to collapse, knew what BAQ meant. I knew everything.

Most of all, I knew that I was running out of
time.

I tucked away my BlackBerry and hurried out the
door, apologizing to Barber on my way, though surely he didn’t deserve one.
There was an express elevator from the executive suite, so I didn’t bother
stopping for my overcoat. In less than sixty seconds I was in the ground-floor
lobby, pushing through the revolving doors at the bank’s main entrance. The
sidewalk on Seventh Avenue was bustling with nine-to-fivers headed for the
subway, eager to start their weekend. The zoo’s white van was at the curb, where
we had agreed last night that Connie would meet me, and I jumped into the
passenger seat.

“We need to go to Lemuel Shattuck right now. It’s
an emergency.”

“Is Dad okay?”

“A doctor called saying that I needed to get there
as soon as possible, that there’s something Dad wants to tell me.”

“Oh, my God, he’s dying.”

I hated to see such pain in her expression, but we
had to move. I took my BlackBerry from my pocket and removed the battery.

“What are you doing?

“The spyware in here could have GPS tracking.
Taking out the battery disables it.”

“If there’s spyware on that phone, they already
know you’re headed to the hospital.”

“Call me paranoid, but I don’t want the guy who
killed Evan Hunt knowing exactly where I am on the road between here and
Boston.”

“Okay, but if it’s a tracking chip, it has its own
power source. Removing the main battery won’t disable it.”

I figured a scoutmaster would know. I rolled down
the window and tossed the phone into the street. A passing bus ground it into
the pavement.

“That will,” I said.

“If you were a scout, I’d pull your world
conservation badge.”

“Drive, Connie.”

53

T
hat Friday, just after dark, Mongoose’s flight touched down at Westchester County Airport, a two-runway operation that served one of the largest fleets of corporate jets in America. The other passengers on board worked for the same hedge fund in Greenwich, just across the Connecticut state line in affluent Fairfield County. Mongoose didn’t know them, didn’t care why they were flying back from Ciudad del Este before dawn, and hadn’t said a word to them since takeoff. Commercial nonstops from Ciudad del Este to New York were nonexistent. With $2 billion in the pipeline, Mongoose had jumped all over the open seat on a chartered Gulfstream jet, even if the car ride from White Plains to Midtown was over an hour.

“Your luggage will be on the tarmac,” said the flight attendant.

“Got none,” said Mongoose. No bags would naturally prompt a few questions at customs, but that was easier than trying to explain traces of blood, bone, and soft tissue on a commando wire saw.

The “enhanced interrogation” of Manu Robledo had taken about two hours. Using the nylon rope from his tool kit, Mongoose had completely immobilized his prey, flat on his back, in the bathtub. Robledo’s arms were up over his head, his wrists tied to the plumbing fixtures. The assistance rail on the wall at the other end of the tub was strong enough to secure his feet, shoes off. The drain could handle any amount of blood, but just to make sure that Robledo didn’t bleed out too soon, Mongoose had fastened a tourniquet around both wrists. Then he’d gone to work.

The left thumb had been first. Ignoring the muffled pleas for mercy, Mongoose had wrapped the wire around the base and pulled in rhythmic fashion: left, right, left right. All Robledo could do was grab the wire, but the result had been a severed index finger along with the severed thumb. As a general proposition, a wire saw took anything that got in its way—and Robledo’s right thumb was next. Had it not been for the gag in his mouth, Robledo’s screams would have awakened the entire hotel. But he was powerless to resist, save for the futile grasp of the wire saw, and the result was the same: simultaneous severance of his thumb and index finger. Mongoose had paused to allow Robledo to get a full grasp of his condition, making sure that Robledo watched as, one by one, he’d flushed the digits down the toilet. Then he’d tied another tourniquet to Robledo’s ankle. The big toe would have been too predictable. He wrapped the wire saw around the middle of the foot, through the center of the arch, pulling it tight. From the look in Robledo’s eyes, he’d begun to feel the pain even before the wire had torn into his skin. An opportunity had presented itself. Before starting the back-and-forth, Mongoose had looked Robledo in the eye and said, “I’m going to give you the chance to tell me everything. Do you want that chance?”

Robledo had nodded eagerly.

Talk, talk, talk. The starting point had been the Church of Peace and Prosperity International, which Robledo explained was a front for a data-mining operation that would identify and then recruit angry young Islamic extremists who were already in the United States and who could be persuaded to blow themselves up in shopping centers. There was nothing that Robledo would not have told him. At some point, however, the risk of someone hearing his screams was too great. Not that anyone in Ciudad del Este would bother to call the police, not that the police couldn’t be bought off even if they came. As it was, Robledo had even confessed to participation in the worst terrorist attack ever against an Israeli diplomatic mission, the bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires on March 17, 1992. False confessions were a definite hazard of wire saw interrogation. But it was a fact that no one had ever been prosecuted for the murder of twenty-nine and wounding of dozens more, many of them schoolchildren, in that bombing.

You never know.

Mongoose was through airport customs and immigration before six o’clock. He was walking toward the taxi stand when his cell phone rang. It was Barber.

“Joey baby, how are you?”

“I told you to stop calling me that. Listen to me.”

Mongoose waved off a taxi and stood at the curb as Barber filled in the details of his meeting with Patrick Lloyd. The fact that Tony Mandretti had called for his son, had something to tell him from his deathbed, was of special interest.

“What are you afraid of, Joey? That Daddy is going tell his little boy about the crooked man who lives in a crooked house and runs a crooked bank?”

“No, asshole.”

“Oh, I know,” Mongoose said, his voice laden with even more sarcasm. “You’re afraid Mandretti’s going to tell his son that he didn’t kill Gerry Collins, and that our own government paid him to confess.”

“I know you believe that, but it’s simply not true.”

“Bullshit. You don’t have to know everything about Operation BAQ to understand that it couldn’t work unless Robledo was on the outside leading his investors down the road we’d paved for them.”

“You believe that. Mandretti believes it. Patrick Lloyd will believe it once he hears it from his father. I’m telling you that it is absolutely not true, but somebody planted that seed, and this is going to be a classic case of ‘perception is reality’ if I don’t crush this right now.”

Mongoose said, “It’s just not clear to me why this is my problem to fix.”

“Try this on for size: you won’t see ten cents of the recovered money if this father-son reunion blows the lid off Operation BAQ. You got nothing on me if that secret gets out.”

Mongoose considered it. “Funny how life works, isn’t it? I remember sitting in your study not too many hours ago, offering you a partnership.”

“Don’t go there.”

“Our interests actually seem to align here, partner.”

“Brilliant. Just don’t call me your partner.”

“That’s fine, Little Joe. Where is Lloyd now?”

“He and his sister are driving to Boston.”

“I’ll head them off.”

“No.”

“Excuse me?”

“You and I may be forced to sleep together, but I am not going to roll over and put myself in the position of having to explain the sudden disappearance of two young and perfectly healthy people like Patrick and his sister. Work from the other end: silence the sixty-year-old man who’s already on his deathbed.”

“That actually makes sense,” said Mongoose, “but I’m not sure there’s time.”

“Use the corporate helicopter. It will have you in Boston at least two hours before Patrick and his sister can drive there.”

“It’s not just a race between Patrick Lloyd and me. We’re talking about the hospital’s prison unit. The place is on high alert since that phony priest got through security.”

“Yeah, and I wonder who the phony priest was,” Barber said.

“Never mind that,” said Mongoose. “You said special arrangements were made for Patrick to be at his father’s bedside. The question is, how do
I
get at his bedside?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll take care of that,” said Barber.

Mongoose smiled. “Still have friends in high places, eh, Joey?”

“Just get on the helicopter,” said Barber. “I said I’d take care of it.”

“One more thing,” said Mongoose, his tone very serious. “I understand that whomever you hired to take out Evan Hunt also took his computer with the encrypted Treasury memo.”

“I didn’t hire—”

“Spare me the lame denial,” said Mongoose. “I just want you to know that it doesn’t matter what you did with that computer, my safety valve is in place. Every day, your memo on Operation BAQ is automatically reset to go straight to the media at midnight, unless I manually deprogram the e-mail blast. The day I die is the day that memo launches. Is that clear?”

“Yes,” said Barber.

“Good,” said Mongoose. “Make sure it’s crystal clear to your friends in high places.”